Can I Receive Money From Overseas Instantly?

In a time of technological advancement, people are used to receiving everything instantly. If you are expecting money, you care more about how long it takes to receive money from overseas. Let’s help you with profound answers.

You might think that international money transfers are mainly handled by the person sending the money, but it’s usually not so. There are transfer rules that come into play when transferring money, especially large amounts from one country to another.

How Long Does It Take to Receive Money From Overseas?

You need to understand some rules when expecting funds from overseas. Several transfer protocols have to be followed and verifications of both parties done properly to make sure it’s not a fraud, scam, or money laundering deal.

These are the reasons why your international transfers don’t hit your accounts immediately. International bank transfers take about one to two days but may take up to five days, which always depends on the currency. 

The Dollar and the Euro are faster than weak currencies. Nevertheless, it may take even longer than five days for the transfer to clear because the receiving end can take some time to process it.

Also, due to factors such as the infrastructure of a country and its banking regulations.

Factors That Cause Delay in Transfer

The reasons you might have to wait for this number of days to get the money sent to you from overseas is what we will be discussing here.

Basically, you will realize that this is due process and the sender can’t influence the transfer time in any way. This includes:

1. Verification Processes

International services have to go through checks and audits to ensure their compliance with rules and procedures, which will generally cause delays in transferring funds from one country and account to another.

2. Time Zone Differences

The difference in time zone, between the locations of the sender and the receiver can be a significant cause of the delay in getting the transferred amount. Most times countries outside the same continents might take longer time.

3. Banking Systems

Differences in the banking system and infrastructure levels across nations can in turn lead to the lengthening of processing time. This often happens between top-tier countries and developing countries.

4. Currency Conversion

 In such situations, the funds would pass through several channels in exchanging the money into another currency for its value and this takes quite some time.

5. Compliance Checks

Financial institutions are undertaking the thorough identification of loopholes to stop fraud and money laundering, which is usually the cause of the delay in the transfer process.

Other Ways to Receive Money From Overseas?

Since you’re on the receiving end, the method of transferring money internationally and the choice of provider may be out of your hands. But even so, it’s useful to know a bit about the different ways of receiving money from overseas.

1. PayPal

Friends, family, or even business associates can make payments into your PayPal account from theirs. It’s an easy, secure way to transfer money from person to person, and fees are based on a percentage of your transfer amount. PayPal is great for small transfers, up to about $200.

Just remember, for PayPal to be a viable option, both the sender and the receiver need to have an account.

2. Instant Money Transfer

Your sender can use either their regular bank or an IMT specialist to transfer money from overseas to you but remember that you’ll need to nominate a bank account to receive the funds.

The better the deal your sender gets, the more money you’ll receive, so it’s worth doing some research so you get the most bang for your buck.

3. Bank-to-Bank Transfer

Bank wires are done by transferring money from one account to another account overseas. The sender will initiate the transfer from his/her bank account, this is done through the vast online banking or mobile banking system. 

Your name, account number, address, name of the bank, national part of the name of the bank, and the SWIFT code or the Bank Identifier Code. this is all you need to make a transfer.

4. International Money Order

International money (cheque) can now be accepted. An international cheque can be obtained by the sender from any desired currency through a bank overseas in the currency that is required from his/ her account. The sender could then mail the cheque to you to cash it, either at the bank or into your account.

5. Wise

The Wise Multi-Currency Account has a low fee rate and transparency features on the profile page. Hence, one can hold 50+ currencies and can transfer them free of charge in major ones. 

It may link to a debit card which is accepted everywhere, meaning that one can engage in international transactions just the same. Opening accounts in several countries have been made easier, and there are no fees for you to open them.

6. Payoneer

Payoneer is a platform that specializes in global money transfers, enabling clients to send and receive funds anywhere in the world, irrespective of the complex banking records in local banks. 

With the feature of a data analysis dashboard, it is useful to business owners from transactions to directors and payment to freelancers. 

Payoneer is the service that makes transactions as fast as it’s possible and goes even further to ensure there are cost-saving options for every user, no matter the size of the end user’s business.

Some factors like exchange rates and fees or charges on the amount could also affect how much you get in return after the sent amount shows up on your statement.